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Man Learns To See Again After 40 Years Of Blindness
MonTemplar writes "BBC News Online reports the story of Mike May, from California, who lost one eye and was blinded in the other at the age of three after an accident. Now, doctors have been able to restore the sight to his remaining eye by transplanting corneal and limbal stem cells. The operation, and their subsequent work with Mr May to monitor his recovery, in an attempt to better understand how the brain learns to interpret the signals from the eyes, have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Ironically, being able to see again has meant Mr May has had to re-learn some activities, such as skiing or crossing the road, where he had become proficient when blind."
the washington post also has an article on the guy, perhaps a little more in depth. pretty neat stuff.
That's nothing. Blind people:
This is because learning to distinguish faces is mostly a learned skill... there seems to be a certain stage of development in early life where the brain is "primed" to learn this sort of thing... and if you miss this opportunity (due to blindness etc...) it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to learn to distinguish faces later in life. An appropriate parallel would be with "wild children", kids that grow up in the wild unattended (it happens occasionally) and don't learn to speak. There seems to be a time during cognitive development which the brain is also primed to learn speech (or develop a base set of phonemes, at any rate), and if this stage is missed, the person has a very difficult time learning to speak, and always speaks "strangely".
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
An example, going back to the Civil Rights Movement analogy, would be a prominent African American pop-star taking on a progressively paler complexion to his skin over a few years (I won't name any names, but his initials are Michael Jackson).
Actually, in slight defense of MJ, his skin lightening has nothing to do with surgery or any voluntary act. Michael Jackson has a condition known as Vitiligo, which causes his skin to become progressively paler over the years as it loses its pigment. I ought to know, as I have the condition as well. As I get older, I'll get whiter and whiter until I have no real pigment left in my skin. It spreads from a patch or two to the whole body, and is extremely pronounced in black people (it's pretty pronounced in me because I'm mixed-racial, but I'm only 24 years old so it won't get really bad for several years). It's the reason Jackson wore a glove in the 80's.
Of course, this skin condition--also known as Leukoderma--has NOTHING to do with the fact that he now has no nose.
If you're interested, 'The Anthropologist on Mars' by Oliver Sacks (a neurologist who's very famous for writing case studies) has a very detailed and informative description of sight restoration.
:)
His novel focuses heavily on the neurological basis for the phenomenon and it's possible failure as an effective cure. Read on, it's great stuff, and available in paperback.
Many parents of deaf children are against cochlear implants because of the health hazard. Without proper care it's possible to transmit infections to the brain. Also, as far as I understand, deaf people don't consider themselves disables because they can effectively communicate via sign language. If someone can communicate already, why would they risk their health to communicate in a different way? If someone is treated differently after they get their child cochlear implants, it's because the parents of deaf children are probably disgusted because of the previously mentioned views.